


The Dragons Always Know

by EledoneCirrhosa



Series: The Founding of Providence Weyr [3]
Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: 8th Interval, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Impression (Dragonriders of Pern), Pern (Dragonriders of Pern)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 14:41:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20324737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EledoneCirrhosa/pseuds/EledoneCirrhosa
Summary: Something unexpected happens when Providence Weyr’s first gold egg hatches.





	The Dragons Always Know

**2065.13.25** Eighth Interval, Providence Weyr

It was hard not to think of the Holder and Crafter girls as rivals.

Providence Weyr had been founded seven Turns ago. This was the first clutch in all those seven Turns which contained a gold egg. Helonia had been waiting and waiting for a chance to stand on the Hatching Sands. Clutch after clutch had been laid, the interval between each getting larger, and the number of eggs in each getting progressively smaller as Providence’s golds reacted to the retreat of the Red Star. And not one of those clutches had contained a gold egg in all those seven Turns. Until now.

This was Helonia’s one chance to be a dragonrider! Who could tell when the next gold egg might be laid? In a Turn she would be considered too old to stand. And what did the Weyr do? Had they restricted the gold candidates to weyrbred girls like herself, who had been waiting and waiting? No, they quoted Tradition and went on Search in the two Holds which had been founded at the same time as the Weyr – Providence Hold on Western Isle and Chardro Hold on the Southern Continent. Then they Searched the crafthalls too. 

Helonia had heard rumours that the crafthalls were so short of apprentices some crafts were considering taking on girls to fill the gap. Well if that was the case, then why were they letting their girls come to the Weyr? Why couldn’t they keep them at home to make flutes for the Harpercraft or weave sails for the Seacraft, or whatever it was that apprentices did. Why did they have to come _here?_

Helonia’s gaze strayed across the classroom to where the non-weyrbred girls sat clustered together, as if for safety. There were two craftbred girls – bubbly Pachira whose father was a Harper, and dour Galerita from the Seacraft. They were both barely fifteen, she noted sourly. They had Turns and Turns to wait for another gold egg. 

The Holder girls were also depressingly young. Mimga was from Providence Hold, and thought herself special because of the intimate relationship between Providence Hold and Providence Weyr. Helonia had overheard her spouting authoritatively to the other Holder girls about life in the Weyr. She’d thought about butting in to point out Mimga’s errors and misapprehensions, but decided against it. Let them find out the hard way only the weyrbred _really_ knew all the ins and outs of Weyr life.

Peripita and Mariette were from Chardro Hold in the Southern Continent. Both were mousy and quiet. Helonia didn’t know why they’d been Searched at all. They certainly didn’t seem to have the spirit to be a goldrider. Nor the wits, given they believed Mimga’s nonsense about hatchlings who didn’t find a lifemate having to be put down or they would turn cannibalistic. That, Mimga had said, was why the girls had overheard adult dragonriders fretting about the lack of candidates for this clutch. Hah! Showed how much _she_ knew. 

There were sixteen women and girls standing for the gold egg in Ordovith’s clutch. Sixteen! It was more than enough to give any gold hatchling more choice than she could shake a stick at. It was boys that they were short of, not girls. Sixteen girls were standing for one gold egg, and eleven boys were standing for the remaining six eggs. There was even talk that the Weyrleaders might drop the age at which boys could stand, so that their numbers could be boosted. 

If they wanted more boys, Helonia thought bitterly, why didn’t they send riders out to Search for them, and leave those blasted Holder and Crafter girls at home? But that wasn’t Tradition, so it Simply Was Not Done. It had been explained to her several times by the Weyrlingmaster and the goldriders, and she’d heard the capital letters implicit in their tone every time. Shards and shells, but she could learn to hate Tradition!

“Helonia.” Weyrlingmaster P’caro’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “I know you think you know all this already, but could you please do me the courtesy of at least _pretending_ you are paying attention?”

There was an outburst of tittering from the weyrbred and other girls alike. Helonia felt her face burn red. She mumbled an apology and turned her attention to his diagrams of dragon growth.

Please, please gold dragon – choose me. 

# # #

2065.13.28 (Turn’s End) – Hatching Day

Helonia, Mimga and Marzie – another weyrbred woman in the same situation as herself – had been assigned to keeping the littles out from underfoot as the Weyr prepared for the Turn’s End feast. That was the problem with being a gold candidate when there were eggs on the verge of hatching – people found make-work for you, instead of giving you proper tasks you could get your teeth into. It was all right for Marzie – she had two children of her own in this unruly mob of tears and tantrums. But Helonia had gone out of her way to avoid having brats of her own, despite all the pressure to ‘build up the Weyr’ and ‘provide the next generation of dragonriders’. She wanted to _be_ a dragonrider, not give birth to one!

So far they’d had all the littles try to sing along as they recited the Way Forward Song, which listed all the Weyrs, Weyrleaders and Weyrwomen who had gone through time to the Ninth Pass. Helonia supposed it was important that people in four hundred Turns from now knew the names of those who would reappear in their time. But the littles didn’t have the patience for the whole song. It was Mimga who suggested that they set them all to making drawings of the various bronze and goldriders in question. 

So now they were outside in the Turn’s End sunshine, making use of the huge pile of broken and discarded roof tiles left over from the on-going building project that was Providence Weyr. Mimga had scrounged some charcoal sticks for some of the children, but most were happy to fingerpaint using mud. 

“Yes, that’s lovely, dear,” said Helonia to a muddy child, holding up an equally muddy clay tile for her inspection. She wasn’t sure which of the random blobs and fingerprints were supposed to be the drawing and which were accidental additions brought about by the state of the artist. “Which dragonrider is it?”

“It’s Mardra, a’ course,” said the child, as if that was obvious. “See – I drewed Fort Weyr too.” The blobs Helonia had assumed were a dragon were apparently architecture. 

“Um, yes, so you have.” Helonia could feel a headache coming on. Her head was thrumming. 

“The eggs is hatching!” The child screeched out abruptly and ungrammatically, and Helonia realised the thrumming was not in her head, but in the air around her, as dragons began to take up the call. “Hatching, hatching!” shrieked the child.

She lurched to her feet, head snapping from side to side as she hunted the air for S’newar and bronze Russith, all thoughts of children and mud gone from her mind. Traditionally a bronze and his rider escorted each gold candidate to the Hatching Grounds. S’newar had been assigned to her – so where was he?

Bronze shapes blinked into the air nearby, sending the children into shrieks of excitement, as riders beckoned to Marzie and Mimga to hurry. Lower Caverns women were running from the Main Hall to take charge of the littles. 

“S’newar, where _are_ you?” Intellectually Helonia knew there was plenty of time. That the dragons had only just started humming so the eggs would not crack shell for some while yet. But she couldn’t help the rising sense of panic that she needed to get there _right now_ in case the gold egg hatched without her. 

The muddy child tugged at her sleeve. “Are you gonna be a goldrider?”

“What? Yes! Yes, I am!” There were S’newar and Ruissith at last, gliding down towards them, then angling away from where toddlers were darting and swerving unpredictably.

“Then you kin have Mardra.” The child thrust the muddy tile at her. “She’s a goldrider and you’re gonna be a goldrider too. You kin draw yourself on wif Mardra.”

“I… thank you.” Helonia took the muddy tile, strangely touched. 

“Off with you now, woman!” One of the Lower Caverns ladies scooped up the muddy child into her arms and shooed Helonia towards S’newar and Russith.

# # #

They flew to S’newar’s weyr, the bronze barely touching down on the ledge before Helonia slid down his shoulder and darted inside. She shed clothes as she ran, splashed water on face and hands from the pitcher that was set out for washing, and then dived for the peg that held her white candidate’s robe. The garment was barely in place when she was racing back outside again, bare feet slapping on the coarse stone surface.

“Sandals!” roared S’newar. “Those sands are hot!”

Helonia ran back inside, and for a panic-stricken moment she couldn’t see the sandals she was supposed to wear. Then she spotted them, sitting were they had always sat, on the floor by S’newar’s clothes chest. She grabbed them and half ran, half hopped outside, as she tried to put them on whilst on the move.

S’newar was grinning at the sight, but Helonia didn’t care how undignified she looked. Only getting to the Sands mattered. 

The bronzerider reached down to haul her onto Russith’s neck and then they were aloft and gliding towards the stone and brick entrance to the Hatching Grounds. Two green dragons veered off to give Russith precedence, and suddenly they were gliding down the tunnel to the Sands. The bronze backwinged and alighted daintily. Helonia dismounted, giving a hearty thanks to S’newar and Russith. Then she took a deep breath and strode to where several other white-robed girls already stood.

She remembered to bow politely to gold Ordovith as she approached. The coveted gold egg sat slightly apart from the rest of the clutch, close to the queen. The girls ranged themselves in a half circle about it. Despite her rising excitement Helonia could not help but cynically notice the weyrbred girls were the ones to stand closest to Ordovith.

All the eggs were rocking vigorously by the time the line of boys marched in, led by Weyrlingmaster P’caro. The male candidates took up position on the far side of the clutch, between the eggs and the audience of dragons and humans who had gathered to watch the spectacle. 

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the first egg ruptured and a hatchling tumbled out into the hot sand. It was a bronze, and Helonia could hear the audience’s muttered approval, even over the humming of the dragons. A bronze hatching first was said to be lucky. She fervently hoped some of the bronze’s luck would rub off on her.

She kept her eyes firmly fixed on the rocking gold egg, not letting herself be distracted by the sound of creeling hatchlings and joyous cries from the boys as the first Impressions were made. She tried to think welcoming thoughts, and to compose her mind into some semblance of the steadfastness and calm which was what she thought a queenrider ought to be. 

The gold shell split, and the gold hatchling sprawled on its back amidst the shards. It flapped wings and legs in an uncoordinated fashion for a minute, before figuring out how to right itself. Helonia realised she was holding her breath.

The gold tottered towards the line of women, eyes whirling red. If Marzie had not dodged out of the way, it would have barged straight into her. The gold’s head swung to and fro, obviously not finding what it wanted at that end of the line. It stumbled off and Helonia realised it was heading straight for her. She broke into a smile. This was it! This was what she’d been waiting her whole life for!

The hatchling did not pause. It didn’t even raise its head as it passed her by. 

Helonia stood frozen in shock as the gold hatchling tottered to where Mimga stood and then sat back on its haunches and crooned. She felt her eyes blur with tears as the Holder girl cried out “Her name is Cotesiath!”

That was it. Her life was over. Helonia’s shoulders drooped. Some of the other girls started to move slowly off the sands, as they had been instructed to do once the gold had impressed. But Helonia couldn’t even summon the energy to move. She’d been right. If those blasted Hold and Craft girls hadn’t been there, perhaps the gold would have picked one of them. Picked her!

She felt a touch on her shoulder. It was Marzie, a thin smile trying to cover her own disappointment. “Come on, Helonia. We can watch the boys from the sidelines. A sixteenth mark says Lacol gets a blue.”

Helonia shook her head. She didn’t want to watch other people’s triumphs and tragedies. She wanted to crawl off into the blackness of between and never emerge into the light of day. 

“We can’t just stand here,” said Marzie imploringly. “Look, we’re confusing the hatchlings. They think we’re boys.” The other woman gestured, and Helonia turned bleary eyes to where the last three hatchlings of the clutch lurched across the sands in their direction – a blue and two greens. 

Marzie was right. It was cruel to confuse the newborns. Helonia sighed and turned away from the hatchlings. She and the other girl had barely taken two paces before the intensity of the hatchlings’ creeling went up an order of magnitude. She looked back and stopped, realising the three hatchlings were in pursuit.

“I think we’d better stay still,” she said. “Until they get close enough to see we’re not boys.” She could see Weyrlingmaster P’caro gesturing at the remaining candidates to approach closer to the strays. His tactic partially worked. One of the greens stopped in indecision, looking back and forth between the girls and the advancing boys.

“I was wrong,” said Marzie, as the green made her choice. “Lacol – L’col – got a green.”

But Helonia was not listening. Her gaze was caught and held by the whirling colours of dragon eyes, shifting from red to blue. The hatchling gazed at her with adoration. _I am Sturtiath. _

_But… you’re blue, _ she said wonderingly. She reached to stroke the wet blue muzzle.

_Yes, of course I am, _ said Sturtiath. _Why would I not be? _

_But blues don’t choose women! _

_I am a blue. I chose you. Blues do choose women._ Sturtiath seemed pleased with the train of his logic. Then he added plaintively: _I am very hungry. _

Helonia hastened to assure her wonderful, perfect blue that there would be food very, very soon. She turned to Marzie to try and convey the wonder and amazement that she was feeling. But Marzie was no longer standing beside her: she was on her knees in the sands, her arms wrapped round the neck of a green hatchling.

_Farmeth is very hungry too, _ Sturtiath informed her. _We have found you, but we are both VERY hungry. _

In a daze, Helonia began to lead the little blue off the Sands. Blue! He was blue and he was perfect.

How could she have ever wanted a gold?

**Author's Note:**

> I and several other fanfic writers originally planned to make Providence Weyr a shared-universe writing group. Various stories - including this one - were to set up events during the Eighth Interval. This world-building was to get the Weyr the way we wanted (female riders on blue, green and brown; greens which laid eggs) for an inevitable culture clash when Providence Weyr rejoined mainstream Pernese society in the Ninth Pass. 
> 
> Sadly, Real Life got in the way of our plans.


End file.
